


In Another Life

by literaryFRIVOLOUSneophyte



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Post-Undertale Neutral Route - Empress Undyne Ending, Undertale Neutral Route
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-10
Updated: 2019-01-10
Packaged: 2019-10-07 18:03:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17370782
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/literaryFRIVOLOUSneophyte/pseuds/literaryFRIVOLOUSneophyte
Summary: For the @neutralzine on tumblr.In another life, she’d be smiling and laughing with her friends. In another life, she’d never be this theatrical. In another life, she’d be scared of herself right now, just as much as she’s scared of humans.





	In Another Life

**Author's Note:**

> I tried to go for a fairytale vibe but I think it just came off as overdramatic, oh well.

They march west as trumpets blare and flags wave against the grey sky. Empress Undyne rides at the front of her swollen army, as bloated as an overfed beast. Her spearhead pierces the heavens, and from that wound, sunlight spills in long beams onto her polished armor. Silver tassels hang from her saddle, and she wears a long flowing cape - a dead king’s raiment, heavy on her shoulders. With thick forearms and biceps, her muscular frame can handle the weight.

Her one eye gleams with determination, and beneath it, her mind passes through the empty rooms of the castle. Rooms where children’s sticky hands once reached for butterscotch pie and then for daggers. Rooms where flowers once bloomed in golden victory and then fell to ash. Undyne can see, in the shape of the clouds, the piles of dust left in the human’s wake.

Their mercy is a knife in her back that twists deeper every second she keeps on living. Her friends lay behind her, in the glossy pages of previous chapters, when the edges were golden-gilt and the fairytale was innocent. She stands in the last sentence, wondering what the lesson was supposed to be and why she had to be the one to teach it.

In another life, she’d be smiling and laughing with her friends. In another life, she’d never be this theatrical. In another life, she’d be scared of herself right now, just as much as she’s scared of humans.

Her soldiers ride single-file on a narrow ridge, and on either side, the forest is thick with shadows. They bare their yellow teeth as they shiver, and a wind that hasn't seen their kind since the war emerges with a territorial growl from the trees to stick its wet nose against bare skin.

As the war cries dim, the creak of leather and the beat of hooves echo down the mountainside. No one speaks. The infantry huff for breath, making little clouds in the autumn air out of beaks or snouts or nostrils, and the horses snort and shake their heads at flies around their eyes and ears. Avian soldiers fold their wings around them, and reptiles flick their split tongues and seek out warm patches of light on the path.

Behind them stands the dormant volcano of Mt. Ebbot and its blue-shadowed peaks brooding under the weight of snow, as if mourning the loss of its escaped empress. Night falls, and the ridge before them slowly widens into a valley, blanched by the moon. The army tramples every flower in their way.

Undyne’s gills twitch when she sees movement out of the corner of her eye. Her sweat is cold and slick where it's caught between the fabric of her undershirt and her scales, and she clenches her jaw in a snarl.

She sees smoke, rising over the treeline and into the sky.

Somewhere in this strange human world, there is a village with a child, using sticks to play with other children or being chased with those same sticks. At night, the child is tucked into bed and kissed on the forehead, or the child is huddled by a fire as they shiver in the dirt. Either way, Undyne will find them.

She will pick the child up by the nape like a dog, while they play or sleep, whether they are loved or hated. And nothing human will remain when she returns to her throne.

Empress Undyne raises her arm like a bayonet, and then she points at the smoke and lets it drop. All at once, her army begins to charge.


End file.
